Except - in the developed world at least - there just aren't many evolutionary pressures any more. Modern medicine can help carriers of almost any gene survive to procreate, and with in vitro fertilisation and suchlike, you don't even need to necessarily be attractive to pass them on. Evolution is an adaptive mechanism, not some endless process churning out more and more advanced forms of life. When there's drastic environmental changes (evolutionary pressures) you get rapid evolution, as problematic traits

Evolution is an adaptive mechanism, not some endless process churning out more and more advanced forms of life.

Kinda, it is. Evolution is the change over time of propagation of mutations.

Last year there was a study published on a 40 year old strain of bacteria. What they had found was for the first x years, as mutations occured they did so at a rather consistent rate, and the population 'evolved'. Some mutations propagated, some were out compeated, and so on just as we've come to expect.

But after that first number of years, there were no more changes to the environment, but the mutations continued at a very similar rate. What they found though was that at that point, with no other pressures on the population, that the % of the mutations that lead to improved survival/proginy dropped significantly. There were still lots of mutations, they just weren't leading to any further evolution.

The organizms had advanced to the point that most negative trait mutations did not effect them significantly enough to prevent their growth rate, and that positive trait mutations did not give them enough of an advantage to out-compete other organizms.

That isn't to say that some other mutation won't occur to greatly improve their survivability, or that introducing some new stimulus wouldn't lead to a new branch of evolution. But there is a point where evolutionary pressure deminishes while the mutation rate remains.

Unless we're adapting to being stab-resistant, or able to survive collision at 100km/hr, we're not really moving anywhere.

Alternatively, consider adaptations (including cultural ones) that make you less likely to get into a knife fight or car crash in the first place. I can't think of too many fang-or-claw-proof prey animals, but I can think of plenty of big-eared, big-eyed, skittish ones.

The greatest generation were tough as leather with great big balls of steel, because they hadn't invented titanium yet. The eventually got off their asses and smashed the Nazis, rebuilt the world from the ashes of global war, made said Nazis put a man on the moon for us and ground communism into dust.

Fuckin' boomers, drained out social safety nets by refusing to adjust to demographic realities, lost two wars to a bunch of rice-eaters, ruined the economy repeatedly, shut down useful investment for future ge

You can't really call being oppressed "participation". If you're going to "participate in society" as the OP said, then you have to have some power over your destiny, and that means having political power. Otherwise, you're just a slave class or an underclass.

Remember, the OP said:And the boomers greatest failure is raising a bunch of whiny blame-shifters who would rather bitch and moan than get off of their hipster asses and participate in society.

Nitpick: Ti wasn't invented. It was discovered as an oxide in 1791 in Cornwall by a pastor/amateur geologist named Gregor. What was invented, of course, was methods for producing it from ores, starting with Hunter in 1910 at RPI, the crystal bar process in 1925, then by Kroll in 1932 which became the Kroll process in 1940, that we still use.Of course you are quite correct that not much titanium was made until the Cold War, when USA started using it for aircraft and USSR used it later for submarines, then th

Joke or not, I get sick of hearing that line. Natural selection just means slow statistical process of change caused by evolutionary pressures that ultimately lead to what we are now. I mean, we don't consider birds flying to be unnatural? They evolved to fly. We evolved to create vaccines.

Actually he was correct in pointing out an important, if subtle, misapprehension a lot of people have about "survival of the fittest". Darwinian fitness is merely a measure of how many of your offspring survived to have offspring of their own. Everything else is a value judgement.

I don't see why there's such a big screaming panic about a disease that gives you spots and a bit of a temperature, and a couple of days off school...

Because for about two per thousand cases, it causes meningitis which kills about half of the affected patients, leaving many of the survivors brain damaged for life. For quite a few who don't get meningitis, it causes blindness and deafness (measles was the #1 cause of both in the 50s.) Because it causes pneumonia of the "hospitalized for days" variety in up to 30% of cases (and before oxygen therapy, IV fluids, and antibiotics killed about 10% of patients.)

I had measles before there were vaccines for it. All I have to do is mention measles to get my mother worked up -- she remembers spending a couple of weeks terrified for me, because she grew up before those treatments and even in a small town in rural Illinois she knew families who had children die of it and others who were handicapped for life.

Talk to people from India about measles, or any of the other vaccine-preventable diseases. You won't find any of them who will tell you those diseases are no big deal, because they know them. In the USA, we've mostly forgotten how bad they are. Thanks to vaccines.

No, your idea is retarded. "Life is dangerous, so why don't we get rid of these things that make it less dangerous for everyone?"

And no, "choosing to get vaccinated" doesn't work either, because the entire point of vaccination is that enough of the population is supposed to get the vaccine and have it take so the bug doesn't get a chance to take hold.

People like you who drone on about "choice" are not only completely stupid, but you are very fucking dangerous. If you don't wish to be vaccinated, then leave

Yeah. My friend's brother has an allergy to the vaccine, and his health relies on herd immunity. When idiots like these (and my one uncle; I don't really talk to him anymore) refuse to vaccinate their kids, my friend's brother is the one most likely to get hurt by this.

Yeah. My friend's brother has an allergy to the vaccine, and his health relies on herd immunity. When idiots like these (and my one uncle; I don't really talk to him anymore) refuse to vaccinate their kids, my friend's brother is the one most likely to get hurt by this.

Herd immunity protects more than just people like your brother who cannot take the vaccine. The fact is that vaccines are not 100% effective. Herd immunity protects those who took the vaccine but for whom it was not effective. So people refusing to be vaccinated are not just a danger to themselves, but also potentially to anybody who HAS taken the vaccine.

For example, if you got your MMR vaccine before 1990, then there's a 5-10% chance that you're not actually protected from Measles.

You're an ass. If it weren't for science, none of us would be alive, because we wouldn't have made it out of the dark ages. We'd still be filthy and have no knowledge of diseases, and dieing when you were 50 would be a regular part of life. Get fucked you ignorant shit-eating asshole.

If you're not trolling, you're an asshole. The very notion of society is that we can all pitch in for the common interest, for everybody's benefit. And the only mandatory vaccines are those for school children - because schools are the very places in which one might contract measles.

I am sickened by you in particular, and sad for humanity in general, because there are so many people like you that are terrified that somebody, somewhere might benefit from your actions - even if they aren't outwardly altruistic. It's a sort of militant selfishness, or perhaps overly zealous spite, that I literally can't comprehend. Especially when the "benefit" in this case is some poor kid not dying

1) national healthcare systems reduce the cost for everyone2) a side effect is free healthcare for those who "game" the system3) to prevent people gaming the system and solely working on the basis of "personal responsibility" you would prefer to stay in a private system where you would pay more for the same care, purely because going to a national system would allow point two to happen, but it's ok because *you're* ok and covered, even though you'r

My beliefs on this topic are much akin to society's general belief on drunk driving. Personally, I don't shed a tear when I hear that some drunken idiot drove his car into a tree and died because of it. But I do have a problem when the aforementioned drunk veers into the other lane of traffic, killing some poor sober sod driving his friends home because he was the d.d. You wanna kill yourself? Have fun. Your decisions cause other people to die? That's where I start to have a problem.

it isn't that simple. to my knowledge there is no negative side effect from wearing your seatbelt, however there can be for vaccines.

first let me say i recently became a father, and i am not against vaccinations, and my daughter has already had one. However, vaccinations aren't without their risks. the autism link was started by a fraudulent doctor (there were a few stories on slashdot about him a few months ago about him finally losing his medical license, he was a real creep), and then perpetuated by c

Actually, the people most at risk are those who cannot be vaccinated: the very young, and those with weak immune systems. If not for them, I wouldn't care about this sort of thing; for those who choose to ignore science and lose their children to easily preventable disease it's nothing more than Darwinism at work, but it's a tragedy when people die because their neighbors are fools.

Actually, the people most at risk are those who cannot be vaccinated:... those with weak immune systems.

That's my son... It makes the whole debate frankly rather annoying. Like it or not, you have to have to trust your Dr. If Dr. says you should take it, you should probably take his advice and ignore the babble of an actress interviewed on Oprah. If Dr says based on past negative reaction toward vaccine not to try it again and see if next time is even worse, like my son, well then don't.

Its annoying like listening to a debate about the moral ethical and religious purity of amoxicillin antibiotic... I'm all

That sounds terrible. You should try to get your local schools to require vaccination. In my area you must provide proof of vaccination in order to attend school. There are exemptions for health and religious reasons. The vast majority of children are vaccinated, even though there is a pretty large illegal immigrant population. I am grateful for the free immunization program for poor children regardless of immigration status.

Fine, but I'll bet your calculation depended a lot on herd immunity. If enough people stopped getting the vaccination, the risk for dying from measles jumps right the hell up. Just like we're seeing here. I applaud you for doing the math, but consider the fact that when the immunization rate drops too low, measles could come back huge. And people will die in droves, just to remind us that vaccines are good. Please, consider getting your son vaccinated against measles anyways.

Of course you feel that MMR had something to do with autism. After all, the human brain is incredibly good at what it does. And the human brain is amazing and finding temporal links between two events. And you know what? That was an incredibly useful skill to have, back before we started building cities and the like. In fact, it's still really useful most of the time.

I mean, picture yourself a few hundred thousand years ago. You hear a twig snap, and then a tiger jumps out and eats your friend. If your bra

I'm sorry, but MMR does not cause autism. It was made up, in order to sell a more profitable (for the guy who made up the lie and the company that paid him) single vaccine.

It has been one of the most shameful situations to come out of the British science community.

The "study" was massively flawed, and the paper has been discredited and removed from publication.

Now, you may have valid concerns over 0.5% reaction rates to administered medicines (allergies, sensitivity to compounds etc) that cause adverse reactions in some people - and so do the medical professionals; it's why we don't routinely vaccinate 100% of the population, but "causing autism" is not one of them.

The situation you describe is reliance on "herd immunity": if enough of the population is vaccinated that *your* exposure risk is negligible, then yes, there's a slightly higher risk of harm from the actual vaccine than the disease, because there's little-to-no chance of anyone around you can infect you with the disease.

The situation *now* is that because so many families have skipped the vaccinations because of the Andrew Wakefields and Jenny McCarthy's of the world raising fears of vaccine-triggered autism that the situation is now reversed: enough of the population around you have *voluntarily* skipped the immunization that you're at greater risk of the disease.

Ye fscking godz: I'm enough of a geez to remember the days of closed pools and iron lungs because of polio risk. The idea that a parent would *voluntarily* put their kid at risk for diseases because of some talking head on the TV infuriates me.

The vaccine isn't 100% effective, there are very few things which are. According to the National Network for Immunization Information [immunizationinfo.org] one vaccination is 95% and two is 99.7% effective. The U.S. started giving 2 shots in 1989. That probably means there are between 10 and 15 million people in the U.S. who received the vaccine who are still vulnerable to Measles.

Now, I do have a degree in Mathematics so you can take my word on the fact that a 0.3% is much less than 100%. There is a 0.01% of a child having a reaction, and a 0.00001% of a child having a severe reaction, and 0.000001% of a child having an anaphylactic reaction. No children have died as a result of the vaccine in the United States since 1990. Before vaccination started (in the 1960s), 450 people died annually from measles and another 4000 got encephaltis. Again, I give you my assurance that 0 is much less than 9000.

The risks of just one disease the MMR vaccine protects against far greater and more severe than the risks of the vaccine.

If those vaccinated are still at risk -- that's one less reason to bother getting a vax, as far as many are concerned. It's taking a perceived risk in exchange for a non-guara...

Shows you don't have a clue how it works. Epidemics are prevented when a certain percentage of the population has a successful vaccination. Let's say 90% are needed. If the vaccination works 95% of the time, and everyone is vaccinated, then we have 95% successful vaccination, and everyone is fine. If the vaccination works 95% of the time, and 92% get a vaccination, then we have slightly over 87% successful vaccination, and an epidemic could hit almost 13% of the population.

That's a pretty moronic thing to say. Cancer survival rates have been on the rise for decades. But part of that survival is using therapies that can really screw with the immune system, so that group is at far higher risk of contracting serious infections.

You don't understand how the human immune system works. Sure there are a documented cases (Typhoid Mary being the most obvious one that springs to mind) where someone is a carrier for the disease, but for the most part - no your immune system kills stuff.Obligatory wiki article [wikipedia.org]

Because vaccination does not guarantee immunity. Sometimes the vaccinations don't take hold immediately. For example, my fiancee had to get at least 3 Hep B vaccinations because her body didn't react properly the first few times. Or some people have a weakened immune system, and can't produce the antigens. Or what about people who would love to get vaccinated, but can't, because of an allergy to the vaccine? All of those people, and many others, rely heavily on what's called herd immunity.

Herd immunity relies on a sufficent percentage of the population being vaccinated. That way, there are no vectors to people without the immunity. You can't get sick if you don't encounter the bacteria, and if everyone you meet is vaccinated, then you'll never get sick.

However, if someone isn't vaccinated, but is strong enough to fight it off, they could pass it to you. And if you have a weak immune system, that can lead to severe short and long term consequences.

Well, that or everyone seems to overestimate how funny their own jokes are, and I'm obviously no exception. I guess having to explain that it was a joke is a pretty good indication that it wasn't particularly funny. Oh well, back to the drawing board...

Firstly, no vaccination is a 100% guarantee. The best give some high 90's percent chance of immunity, many much lower. However, even when you are not fully immunized from a vaccine, it can still mean you get a much milder case of the disease. Secondly, not all people can be immunized. Children too young to have a fully working immune system, people with cancer or some immunodeficiency. They, in stead, rely on herd immunity: If enough of the surrounding people are immunized, they won't get the disease. So, by choosing to not get immunised when you can, you basically make life much worse for children with cancer. I would say that that is a group who could use any break they can get, and does not deserve to be made more miserable.

Obviously, it's the act of having someone film you while naked that causes an increase in your risk for giving birth to an autistic child. My science proving this fact is as sound as that used by those who claim immunizations has anything to do with it.

Do you have to be such a sexist asshole? You can criticize Ms. McArthy without resorting to such weak-ass bullshit.

Bullshit. It's not sexist if that IS her only qualification. Seriously, Jenny McCarthy launched her career pretty much just on looking pretty naked in Playboy, and not much other qualifications. And frankly most of her career from then on revolved around being a sex symbol, including repeated working for Playboy in various roles. Her appearances in movies also have more to do with being a sex s

I'm not the OP, but neither my mom nor my sister built their careers on sticking their tits out, so it wouldn't be appropriate in their cases, but is entirely appropriate in this case. Not only is it something she can go back to (my mom and my sister would have had to start in order to be able to go back to it), but its the only thing she's shown any real skill at. Even Pam Anderson makes a better pretense of having acting skills.

Unfortunately that would only be the case if refusing the vaccines removed them from the gene pool, but unfortunately it doesn't. Instead if exposes people who cannot have the vaccine due to allergies, immune system deficiencies etc. Not to mention the increased risk that in an environment where most people are immune to infection but some people are not there can be increased chance of it mutating and becoming more virulent or even potentially being able to work around the existing immunities.

I'm sick of hearing this shit. People die because of this. And not just the anti-vaxxers' kids, but people who, for one reason or another, don't or can't develop the immunity, despite getting the vaccination. Or people who can't get the vaccination.

It is well documented [nih.gov] that the measles cures blindness, so I can only congratulate the orchestrators of this anti-vaccine campaign for having the vision to improve America's public health in such a manner.

This year my wife mysteriously got measles (in Italy). She hadn't been vaccinated because when we were young the vaccine was not available. BUT our youngest child got it, too, because he was at the time younger than the age at which you get the shot.

I don't tell you the trouble of having a diagnosis, since the disease is so uncommon today, that after two visits, my wife finally diagnosed it herself on wikipedia (sic). And the trouble of telling all the authorities, which needed to find the lost protocols for such an infection.

To sum it up: the studies linking the shot with autism were done by an UK professor, who has been on trial for telling false results to help his own company [bbc.co.uk].When you don't get the shot and you are healthy, you're just selfishly exploiting the fact that most of "other people" will get the shot and you will be protected. BUT measles IS dangerous, and some people won't have your choice, because they are too young or too unhealthy to get that shot. They will risk severe damages by the disease, so PLEASE don't be a wimp and kindly get vaccinated.

All I can say is this. 1) I am sorry about your wife and child and I hope they have recovered well. 2) I am glad that I got an MMR booster in college. I was going to go to Venezuela to do volunteer work and the CDC had a whole list of shots they required. They recommended (as optional) an MMR booster. My doctor was going to pass on it, but I gave him a bad time. Turns out, the Venezuelans were having a bit of a problem with the measels at the time. So I got it, and I Am glad. I would hate to get som

Yup, Measles is nasty. I was one of the few thousand people who got it in the last resurgence back in '91, despite having had the shots, because my immune system was compromised due to CMV mononucleosis at the time. Nasty, nasty stuff - as in a 10 day hospital stay nasty, with sustained high fever. "Luckily" I only remember a couple of days of it. More luckily my doctor got me to the hospital in time (it only took probably 4-5 hours from the time I started showing spots to the beginning of the time I lost awareness of my surroundings).

Please, everyone, get your shots and have your dependents vaccinated too. Its not just their lives you might be saving.

An episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit says it, and says it well. Even presuming the cases of vacination causing autism were not bullshit, it'd still be worse to not vaccinate all our kids - more would end up dead than would end up autistic.

Of course, people don't see it that way, they just like their knee-jerk responses. I literally can not believe that people actually still refer to something so discredited. People need to spend 5 seconds doing some goddamn research on an issue - and not just looking for things to confirm what they think.

I blame the rise of the schooling system going all 'no opinion can be wrong' - it's such obvious crap, and yet people seem to believe it. I can say it's my opinion the sky is blue all day long, it doesn't make it true. Sure, some opinions - ones of taste, can not be wrong, as they are something inherant to you, but too many parents, when you try and explain that there is no reason to fear vaccinations, will just refuse to listen, tell you to stop 'telling them what to do with their children' and it's 'their opinion' that the vaccines are bad. It's such rubbish. Not only that, but people have somehow managed to grow up seeing all discussion as someone else trying to force you onto their side. The point of discussion is to try and see where the differences in your opinion are - if the other person can convince you that you are wrong, that's excellent - you have just gained something. Likewise if you can show them. Instead, people just refuse to listen to the other side of an argument.

People need to learn that being wrong isn't something bad - and that you sure as hell do not have a right to never be wrong. I get it, these parents want to look after their kids - and who can blame them for that? What I can blame them for is not actually caring enough to check what is actually good for them.

People need to spend 5 seconds doing some goddamn research on an issue

You're asking too much here.

A lot of people just can't understand the result of their search, or won't realize they should do such a search, or cannot sort through the quantity of information available (lots of dross, even in good science). They need to be told, clearly and unequivocally, what's the recommended thing to do in issues involving science/medicine/etc. Any imbecile who publicly tells them to do demonstrably harmful things should be taken to task, and held culpable to the extent which can be justified.

They need to be told, clearly and unequivocally, what's the recommended thing to do in issues involving science/medicine/etc

Well, they have been. They've been told that vaccines are harmful, and they shouldn't give them to their kids. If we had an educated population used to questioning things and doing research themselves, then ignorant demagogues wouldn't be able to get such traction.

I advocate yanking their kids out of school. No vaccination, by choice? Get the hell away from my kids. Herd immunity can probably take care of the vanishingly small number of kids who can't have the vaccine for whatever medical reason.

I think one of the problems is that vaccinations are *too* successful. Parents today (and that includes me and my wife) have never seen the ravages of Measles, Whooping Cough, Polio and the like. We have it easy because we were vaccinated when we were young. Then someone claims vaccines cause bad, scary things which plants doubt in their minds so they do a risk evaluation in their head. They know autism is bad. They probably have seen someone with autism. They have probably never seen someone with measles or whooping cough, though. Their brain tries to come up with a "bad disease" and they think of the flu. So would a lifetime of autism be worse than a week of fever and coughing? Sure. So skip the vaccines.

Problem is that their risk assessment is highly flawed. If they knew the real risks of the diseases, they'd know that this isn't "fever and coughing for a week" but coughing until you get broken ribs, hospitalization, paralysis, blindness, and death (to name a few things the diseases can cause). And these are far more common than any hypothetical vaccine-autism link. I'd much rather have my child turn out to be autistic than turn out to be dead. (As my younger son goes in for 2 vaccines today.)

When the champions of anarcho-capitalism say to STFU and get your kids vaccinated, it really does say something. Unlike the OP though, I'm not sure the blame is to placed on the school system. The places I've seen anti-vaccine hysteria promoted was on the TeeVee by Responsible People like Jenny McCarthy (and by proxy Oprah).

I'm by no means saying schools promote an anit-vaccination agenda (at least, here in the UK, while I was at school - albiet it was a little back, I never saw that). My point was more that they are teaching people to believe that their 'opinions' can transcend reason and fact, and be right regardless.

Obviously I didn't mean a literal 5 seconds. Yes, reasearch takes up parent's already valuable time. So what - that's a responsibility of parenting, if you care, you can make time. Yeah, it hard - but that is parenting. You have to make a choice the child can not.

As to Penn and Teller, they are not missing the point - they knew that argument doesn't apply to the individual child - it doesn't make it less valid.

.... there are risks associated with any medical procedure, including vaccinations. But vaccinations are among the safest things one can do for oneself and the community. The benefits far outweigh the risks, the science is clear on that. Most of the folk that oppose vaccinations do so out of unfounded fears, i.e. gut reactions, not rational reflection of the facts. Instead, they are swayed by the likes of Ms. McCarthy or Mr. Wakefield that there is some sort of giant medical conspiracy. It is precisely this sort of ignorance why more diseases like polio have not gone the way of smallpox, i.e. been eradicated in the wild. In the case of polio, it's thanks to nutty preachers in the affected remaining hotspots making similarly dreary claims re: the polio vaccine.

I attribute the willingness of parents to take a chance with herd immunity to the fact that they haven't themselves seen the effects of polio, whooping cough, etc. in the community around them. There is a reason that in years past people gladly lined up for polio vaccinations - they'd seen the impact, could better trade off the miniscule risk (especially with the post-Cutter-incident monitoring) with the benefits of not having dead, disfigured, or severely disabled children. Indeed, one of the biggest impacts of vaccination programs is the serious reduction in schools for the deaf, dumb, and blind.

Ironically, having rejected comparatively perfectly safe vaccination options, parents seem to have no issues with then putting all the interventionist methods to use to save their children if they do fall sick. I.e. take them to the hospital, operate, perform lots of heroic work to save the child... all of which would not have been necessary if they hadn't blindly followed quacks advice re: vaccinations. And that's what amazes me, the quacks of the world who promote anti-vaccination messages have yet to prove any causal link between MMR and/or thimerosal with autism, yet they stick to this piece of faith, not unlike the folk who will follow cult religions. It's pity for the kids, they have no one looking out for their interests.

Last but not least, what bothers me most about refusing vaccinations is that there will always be some members of the community that have to rely on herd immunity because their own immune systems are not fully functional, they are undergoing immuno-suppressing therapy, or they are allergic to some of the proteins inherent in the current manufacturing processes for most vaccines. Additionally, no vaccine is 100% effective - so depending on the ability of the virus or bacteria to spread through the community, a very high immunization rate is required to protect everyone in the herd, immunized or not.

I hope that some day the likes of Ms. McCarthy or Mr. Wakefield will own up to their hubris, character assassination, innuendo, etc. and apologize to the world not only for disrupting one of the most successful medical programs of our times, but also for killing, disfiguring, and traumatizing gaggles of children needlessly with their panic-mongering. This is not unlike shouting "Fire" in a crowded theatre - especially in the case of Mr. Wakefield where key aspects of his 'research' were later found to be faked, massive conflicts of interest were not disclosed, and interpretations were drawn without the benefit of facts.

For anyone interested in the subject, I highly recommend the books written by Dr. Offit on the matter, especially "Autisms False Prophets", and "Deadly Choices". He details the characters of the anti-vaccination movements quite nicely and shows in reference after reference what the real impacts of vaccine refusal are.

And that's what amazes me, the quacks of the world who promote anti-vaccination messages have yet to prove any causal link between MMR and/or thimerosal with autism, yet they stick to this piece of faith, not unlike the folk who will follow cult religions.

It's worse than that. They change their story each time they are proven wrong. Each time they move the goalposts, their followers nod their heads and agree, never questioning why the story has changed for the 10th time. Wakefield and McCarthy said it, s

would take their children to get Chiropractic. Big pharma wants you all to get vaccinated with their live specimens of the Measles, Mumps and Rubella viruses so your body can learn to deal with these diseases, but it already knows how. It's just being prevented from doing so by poor alignment, non-organic foods, subluxation, voodoo, bad mojo and pesticides.

Chiropractic can save lives, just like homeopathy, acupuncture and faith-healing.

The only proper way to prevent the spread of measles is to sacrifice a white goat to the great Jo'Bu under a full moon with a silver knife. Chiropractic, homeopathy and the like are just being pushed by big Alternative Medicine to distract you from the real truth.

This isn't helped by the media playing people fear of risk. You all remember the type of stats they gave out during the Fukushima nuclear power plant break down. Radiation levels are 500% above normal. People watch that sensationalism and panic. At no point did they demand to know a comparative. "Oh, the same as smoking 50 packs of high tar over a year" or something similar. You get the point.

In the UK a few years back. They put out a story telling women that a type of birth control pill increased their risk of getting cancer. Many women came off the pill immediately and fell pregnant as a result. A few months later they had a follow up story with a Doctor. They asked him about the risk of the drug and what was being done. They then asked his reaction to the pregnancies (which i don't think he was aware of) by the presenter. His reaction was classic a mix of amused bewilderment and a condescending - You do realise that pregnancy is incredibly more dangerous than any risk of cancer this drug ever posed. ... I think what he wanted to say was "Are you all fucking idiots?"

Please read "They put out a story..." as, I personally no longer trust the main UK news outlets such as the BBC, to "report" News with any sort of integrity accuracy or objectivity. The anecdote minus the huge cynicism (I wasn't objective) will have to stay an anecdote as I don't' think I'll be able to find the clip of the Doctor. But here was the story - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/313848.stm [bbc.co.uk] This quote "It undermined general confidence in the pill. We still see women requesting abortion who wrongly

What about people who were vaccinated, but the vaccination didn't take? What about people with allergies to key ingredients in the vaccinations? What about people with compromised immune systems, where the vaccination simply can't take hold?

I wouldn't have a problem with people refusing to be vaccinated if it meant that they and their offspring died. Is that a bit cruel? Yeah, but people die for worse reasons every day, so I'm not going to complain about some idiot letting his kid

Firstly, no vaccination is a 100% guarantee. The best give some high 90's percent chance of immunity, many much lower. However, even when you are not fully immunized from a vaccine, it can still mean you get a much milder case of the disease.
Secondly, not all people can be immunized. Children too young to have a fully working immune system, people with cancer or some immunodeficiency. They, in stead, rely on herd immunity: If enough of the

You pull Walter Hadwen [wikipedia.org] to the limelight as the speaker against vaccination? Someone who lived a century ago, rejected the germ theory and was a member of the Plymouth Brethren [wikipedia.org] (read their member list, it's quite... scary)?

If it was just the anti-vaxxers and their offspring, then maybe I'd agree with you. It's a callous attitude, but we can't protect people from themselves. But the anti-vaxxer crowd weakens herd immunity, which causes people who can't, not won't, but can't get the vaccine, to get ill. And since those who can't get the vaccine often have weakened immune systems, this leads them to be in a worse situation than if you or I got it.

Agreed. Get fucked, anti-vaxxers. Enjoy knowing that your decisions have been indirectly responsible for the deaths of hundreds, all so you could have absolutely no effect on your child getting autism.

I share this sentiment exactly. I have a 10 month old boy, we recently found that he's a little bit allergic to egg. Sometimes the jabs they give have egg in them. But you know what? Fuck it, he's still getting the jab in a couple of months time. They said the chances of him having a reaction to it are still pretty slim, but I'd rather if he was going to have a reaction, he did it in the presence of many qualified nurses and doctors, rather than contracting measles at a random interval in the future, whereby we might not be near any medical professionals. All because I know too many people are not vaccinating their kids, because they're fucking idiot.

This is a sore issue amongst my wife's family and ourselves. My wife and I are completely for vaccination, we're both reasonably intelligent adults and understand all the statistics and how some reports from a decade ago were complete and utter bullshit. However, her mother and aunt disagree. What makes this worse is that her aunt is a nurse, a community nurse that's supposed to promote vaccinations, but because her daughter is somewhat autistic, she doesn't trust them. I hope the guy who wrote that bullshit report, as well as every journalist who proliferated it, dies in a very painful death. Their actions, over the next few decades, could cause hundreds, maybe even thousands of people to die needlessly.

Maybe you remember measles parties, but not the measles wards in hospitals, where people with their brain smashed by encephalitis were kept. In that case, maybe you would have gotten a better picture. Kids also were dying more frequently in the past, and that was not as big an issue as today, because it was not avoidable at best and anyway there were many more kids per family than today.

I was vaccinated (my choice at 18) and survived an infection. I lived with people with measles and was ok all the time. I don't see having the virus spreading to my lungs, eyes, skin and brain as a better option. And I've seen the effects, you don't want to try them.

so a load of people latch onto autism as a reason against vaccination, but its not the only concern. A lot of people are more concerned about lower-level negative immune system responses, such as increased allergy rates.

I'm so concerned about allergies that I'm willing to risk the death or serious illness of my child and many of the vulnerable children around him; I'm a fuckshit!!

The fact is that vaccination programs have been, by any measure, among the most successful public health initiatives ever. Illnesses like polio, measles and smallpox caused untold misery and death, and were major contributors to infant and child mortality rates (which were huge before the end of the 19th century). People today, living in the comfort provided by over a century of public vaccination programs, simply do not understand this. And this garbage about vaccines causing allergies, or whatever it is you're trying to say, even if it were so, would still not be an argument vaccinations. Vaccines, like all medical procedures, carry inherent risks, but the benefits of wide-scale vaccination programs is so large that it outweighs what ultimately are a few relatively infrequent serious side-effects.

Oh, and your whole post reads like yet another idiot who comes up with a pet theory while drinking beers in the backyard with his friends. "Say, y'know Tom, I bet that MMR causes allergies. Little Billy got the MMR vaccine, and now he sneezes all the time."

I hate the knee jerk reaction that somehow Big Pharma is pushing vaccinations on the unwashed masses with help from the government. Most vaccinations are unprofitable especially with the risk of adverse events factored in. Companies would much rather you get sick and need treatment because a one-time shot doesn't make a lot of money. In fact, the government has to specifically create a liability fund to get companies to make vaccines for public use.

But the thing is, you're an outlier. Most parents who refuse the MMR vaccine refuse all forms of vaccines. Thus giving their children no immunity. I applaud you for taking the time to investigate the issue, and make an informed decision. This article isn't about people like you, it's about people who leave their kids with no immunity whatsoever. You, at least, made sure they were vaccinated against all three diseases, even if you didn't take the government standard MMR vaccine.

While it is true that there is a low death rate due to measles in modern societies (1 or 2 per 1000 cases) about 10% of cases develop ear infections that result in permanent deafness. So, I don't think that "staying in bed with plenty of water and some nice warm soup" is the only outcome to worry about.